Offline journalism

I don’t know how they did it back in the day, but reporting without the Internet is a pain in the rear.
I come from the new school of journalism. That means I use Google to look up names and addresses. I check out the court’s Web site if I want to find a lien, deed or lawsuit. Company Web sites are a great way to get information about the business and, more importantly, let me know who I want to talk to and how to contact that person. City administrators send me my open-record’s request via e-mail, right away, with no delay…
In addition, here at Effingham Now’s little satellite office in Rincon, we need the Internet to communicate with the Savannah Morning News mothership on the Chatham Parkway. If we can’t get online, we can’t send our stories for publication.
All of this makes it very problematic when our great World Wide Web goes caput. And for more than a week, that’s exactly what it has been doing.
It has gone out almost every day for more than a week now. I’ve been forced to resort to primitive methods of cultivating information such as going to the court house, calling information, and, gasp, looking in the phone book. Fortunately, our cable companies been able to get the Web up and running again in time for deadline, but I think we may have to invest in some carrier pigeons just for back up.
Anyway, I just want to give props to all of those old-school journalists out there. Skutch, that includes you. You all did your job, and did it well, before any of the conveniences of today came about. I will telegraph you next time we have a system crash out here. Hopefully, you will be able to tell me how to get from “here” to “there” without using Map Quest.

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All of you have been great about all the transmission problems these past few weeks.

Effingham readers should note that the Rincon news team (Wayne, Brenda, Emily, Eric) insisted, through all of this, on staying in Rincon as much as possible to cover the news: They didn't want to come in to Chatham Parkway to work by phone -- they wanted to be there. And they didn't miss a deadline.

Here on Chatham Parkway, we've been pulling for you and admiring the teamwork it's taken to get each edition of Effingham Now out on time. Who would have ever thought how spoiled we'd all be in a just a few years of great technology?

I do appreciate how dependant we can become on technology. When I was a young reporter there was little technology. "Back in the day" we took notes, and if it was a breaking story, called it in to the newsdesk to be written up while the photographer was racing back to his darkroom to process his shots. As a reporter, we were expected to be able to produce concise, accurate stories verbally. Then it was up to the copydesk to make sure that it made sense, the spelling was correct, and we weren't reporting that the honorable gentleman from Illinois was from Ohio.
By the middle of my career, we had some tech, but it was still pretty clunky and we mostly did things the old way. My first cell phone weighed 15 pounds, came in a large bag and had to be plugged in to work (the battery had a working life of about 15 minutes). While we used it for some transmittal, the Internet was still a bunch of tubes (thanks to Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK)), and for art, we still used film and half-tone cameras to produce the cuts.
By the end of my career among the inky scribblers, the cellphone fit in my pocket, we wrote on laptops at the scene, did all submitting by email, and the pictures were digital attachments to the text.
These days, I'm surprised you have to type at all. Don't your implants transcribe your thoughts, yet? Har!
But reminiscing aside, I would caution not to be too reliant on Google and other search engines for background information. While a great place to start, the on-line sources are (or should be) considered 'unconfirmed', and therefore not reliable in and of themselves. The battlefield of journalism is strewn liberally (pardon) with the remains of careers that were too reliant on the "truth" to be found on-line.
And that is quite apart from the ease with which snippets of copy can go from a blog or chat directly (and without attribution) into a news story - a trap that has busted a cap on more than one Pulitzer-winning career.
Kudos for sticking it out in the far-flung wilds of Rincon. Keep up the good work. And beware the bunch of tubes.

Rest assured. I do not rely on Google for my facts, just for basic information to help me along the way. For facts, I rely on Wikipedia… Just kidding. Thanks for the comments and tales of yesteryear.
By the way, what is this film stuff you speak of?

Invented by the Whippersnapper Eastman, comes in big rolls, easy to overexpose, scratch or otherwise ruin (and you'll never know until you process it!). It was what we used, back in the day, when dinosaurs roamed the smoke-filled newsroom, striking terror into the hearts and Keds of copyboys. Back when to spike a story meant to put on a danged spike on the editor's desk. Back when a caption was a cutline because it went under a cut that you had to (wait for it) cut out! Back when the cries of "Lead!" would have every printer in the place leaping back from their work (linotypes used to boil over every now and again). Back when kerning was an artform and the layout stone was a stone. Back then.
No offense to you, sir. Just a comment for those who might read these pages who perhaps confuse the blogoblather-stream with "news."
Sigh.